The pacifistic religious group known as Jehovah’s Witnesses has been declared an “extremist group” in Russia and forbidden to carry out public activities.

Russia’s Supreme Court on Thursday accepted a request from the justice ministry that the Jehovah’s Witnesses be considered an extremist group and ordered its national headquarters in St. Petersburg and all 395 local churches closed. It banned all their activity immediately, and ordered their property seized by the state.

This is the first time that a court has ruled that a registered national centralized religious organization is “extremist” and therefore banned, according to Forum 18 News Service.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses intend to appeal Judge Yury Ivanenko’s decision and have said that, if necessary, they will take their case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Any attempt by Jehovah’s Witnesses to share their beliefs, even within the restrictions of the July 2016 so-called “missionary amendment” to the Religion Law, will now be illegal, as the amendment prohibits any missionary activity by former members of banned “extremist” organizations (see Forum 18’s “extremism” Russia religious freedom survey). The July 2016 changes also imposed harsh restrictions on anyone sharing any religious beliefs, including where and who may share them, as nges (see Forum 18’s general Russia religious freedom survey).

The news service said that Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) had already added the Jehovah’s Witness Administrative Center to its list of “organizations, against which there is evidence of involvement in extremist activity or terrorism,” and the Center’s financial transactions are already blocked.

“The court’s decision sadly reconfirms the disregard of the government for religious freedom in present-day Russia,” commented Jesuit Father Thomas J. Reese, chairman of the commission. “Individual and community expressions of faith, and even private religious beliefs, are not safe from state-sponsored repression and coercion in Russia today.”

And Sen. Roger F. Wicker (R-MS), chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the U.S. Helsinki Commission, an independent agency of the Federal Government charged with monitoring compliance with the Helsinki Accords, stated: “People who practice their faith peacefully should never be in danger of being harassed, fined, or jailed. The court order to seize organization property owned by Jehovah’s Witnesses adds insult to injury.”

But Daria Kirjanov-Mueller, who teaches Russian at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, said the development needs to be seen in the context of the the Law on Freedom and Religion enacted under former President Boris Yeltsin in 1997. In the first years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate “was struggling to serve a huge population of atheists just finally entering into a post-Soviet reality and ready and excited to take on a faith,” Kirjanov-Mueller said. “There was competition, but the majority of the seekers sought Russian Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, there was a selection of religions, and the Russian Orthodox Church lost many ‘native’ Orthodox to various other Christian and non-Christian denominations.”

The 1997 law was meant to address the “unwelcome competition” between the Moscow Patriarchate and other Christian denominations, she said.

“Several churches foreign to Russia were barred from registering” as official religions, Kirjanov-Mueller said. “Twenty years later, the situation has not changed much. The main issue as I see it lies in the fact that the Moscow Patriarchate, along with other branches of the Russian Orthodox Church (such as the Orthodox Church of America) as well as with the support of the Muslim clerics, sees such religious groups’ activity in Russia as a threat. They actually do not see them as pacifist, because their methods are quite activist and, perhaps in the Russian view, ‘extremist.’ Proseletizing is not a part of the religious culture in Russia, and many Russians, as well as the government and the religious establishment are suspicious of it.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses are not the only ones affected, she said. The law applies also to Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists, for example.

She said that the Orthodox in the south of Russia are generally very religious and see groups such as 7th-Day Adventists as competition. “There have been many examples of people from Christian [sects] going into Orthodox churches and distributing literature or in some way disturbing church services,” she said. “They go door to door…and the Russian Orthodox Church sees them as aggressive because they talk to people very openly, they give out literature, they often say very negative things about the Russian Orthodox Church, they’re very good at debating. … They are being perceived — by a very conservative religion that is in the process of reshaping itself and has been doing so for 25 years after a very long time of atheism — they are being perceived as the guys coming in and taking away our future converts.”

The judge ordered all 395 local chapters and its Russian headquarters to close and authorized the government to seize all property. Under the ruling, distributing copies of the Watchtower, discussing their beliefs in public, or even worshipping at a meeting hall has become a crime. Continue reading →

Paris, France, Mar 3, 2017 / 12:54 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic and Orthodox leaders in a joint statement urged Europeans to remember their Christian roots, and to return to them during this time of “widespread concern for (the) future” of Europe.

“…our societies are turning to their spiritual resources, to draw out means of responding to the situation that Europe is experiencing, and to trace the path ahead for a future full of hope and greater confidence,” the leaders said.

During the 5th European Catholic-Orthodox Forum, 12 delegates of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) met in Paris with 12 representatives of the Orthodox Churches in Europe last month to discuss the theme, “Europe in fear of the threat from fundamentalist terrorism, and the value of human person and religious freedom.’’ Continue reading →

The establishment is already trying to spin the narrative that any damaging revelations about Hillary Clinton that come in the form of an “October surprise,” including information about her ill health, will be the work of Russian disinformation agents working on behalf of Vladimir Putin.

The Washington Post reports that the much anticipated “October surprise” could take the form of new revelations about Hillary Clinton’s ill health. However, the pro-Hillary publication asserts that any such information will almost certainly be doctored and leaked by the Russian government.

The Post’s Dana Milbank asks, “Are Vladimir Putin’s operatives planning to dump edited DNC documents on the eve of the presidential election?” before going on to suggest that this contrived October surprise could “show that (Hillary) really did lose most of her brain function in that fall several years ago.” Continue reading →

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